Whoever owns Ranma 1/2, The Teen Titans Animated, or Sailor Moon, it certainly isn't me.
From her perch on top of a three-story apartment building, a Raven now dressed in her 'working uniform' stared wide-eyed at the battle taking place in the street below her — nothing she was seeing made sense!
First was the tall, stringy dark-haired man-shape dressed in tattered, dirt-filthy homespun and carrying a hollow turnip with a snarling face carved into its side glowing from an inner light. The figure should have been ridiculous, but the sharpened teeth revealed by a feral grin under mad eyes combined with the occasional flash of light bursting from the makeshift lantern's slitted eyes and fanged mouth to burn and destroy whatever it shone across as the lantern swung about on its corded twine clutched in bony, blistered fingers ... no, the chaos and destruction killed any amusement Raven might have felt at the apparition's appearance, if not her bewilderment — Jack o' the Lantern's wandering ground in his eternally futile quest for rest was the British Isles and the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, what was he doing in Japan?
And then there was the second sight that made no sense — the five Senshi fighting to contain Jack's mad outburst as he railed against his fate. Not that there was anything unusual about the Senshi's presence as such, fighting the evil that did much more than go bump in the night was what this particular band of Magical Girls did, after all. No, what had Raven befuddled was that she was there. Her gaze kept switching back and forth between the loud and flashy violence taking place in the street below and the gold spindle she dangled from a silver cord. Unlike Jack's lantern the spindle hung down straight with the cord taut, tilted down as it pointed at the street below, the tip swinging as it followed the teenage girl in a red-trimmed fuku with long raven-black hair as she in turn shifted positions, trying to find a clear shot at the ranting madman — Sailor Mars. Smiling wryly, Raven thought, Well, at least I'm finally well and truly distracted.
The visit with Nodoka, Kasumi and Nabiki had not gone as well as Raven had hoped. Not that there had been any outward gaffes, outside of Nodoka and Nabiki continually referring to her as Ranma instead of Raven (she hadn't had the heart to correct them — though Kasumi, of course, was spot-on perfect). But the day had passed in stories from both sides of the almost-twenty years apart: Ranma spoke of growing up in an Asgardian suburb with three wonderful mothers while her memories of Ranma's life slowly returned, then of her life as a superhero after she ran away from home; the others spoke of life from the flip side — three mothers of two little and very different girls. And as story followed story, Raven had found herself struggling more and more with the last thing she had expected — pure, green-eyed, raving jealousy. The thought of Why couldn't that have been me and Akane? had grown stronger and stronger, until she'd finally had to excuse herself before before her control slipped and various objects around the home began exploding. And before Ku Lon and those two young girls returned home, she really doubted her shaky control could survive that encounter.
After that she had given up all thought of seeking out Akane that afternoon, instead meditating through the evening and into the night as she fought to calm down and recover her center. (It would have been faster to find some abandoned building and blow it to Niflheim, but Tokyo wasn't Jump City — she didn't know which buildings were actually abandoned.) Only the shifting of the spindle attuned to Akane in the early hours of the morning had pulled the redhead out of her funk, replacing it with curiosity over what her reincarnated former fiancée could be up to. And that had led her to ... this.
When Mama Urd had given her the spindle, the sheer good-natured humor that had been coming off the platinum blonde commander of the Furies and heir to Niflheim in waves had belied her properly stern demeanor for the occasion. (Raven may not have been in the line of succession, but she was still Hild's adopted granddaughter and demons took oaths seriously — setting out to honor a generation-old promise was important.) Raven had suspected a prank was in the offing, but when nothing had happened she'd shrugged it off. But it seemed that this was the prank.
Raven's wry smile turned predatory for a moment, and she hoped that her mothers — and Mama Urd in particular — were watching. "I'll have to consider how to properly repay her ... less than adequate briefing," she murmured before refocusing on the fight below.
The fight seemed to be in a holding pattern, the Senshi bouncing around the edge of an invisible half-circle crossing both ends of the street and a section of sidewalk, centered on Jack o' the Lantern across the street with his back to a business building's wall. The girls were alternately taking potshots with lightning, flame, chains and whirling tiara while blocking or dodging the scorching hellfire from Jack's lantern. (None of Jack's usual subtlety here — but then, the middle of Tokyo was lacking in the usual swamps for him to lure or scare nighttime wanderers into to drown.) At this time of night the streets were empty of cars and pedestrians, but the buildings on both sides of the street were scarred by scorch marks and divots while glass from shattered windows was scattered across road and sidewalk.
Wait, aren't there five Senshi? And a pink-haired little girl that joins them sometimes — She hastily looked around, and … there! Almost directly below Raven, crouched out of Jack's angle of vision beside some steps leading up into one of the office buildings was another Senshi, in a blue-trimmed fuku with short bluish-tinted hair. She was ignoring the chaos surrounding her, staring at a softly glowing something cupped in her palms. Even as Raven found her, Sailor Mercury shouted, "Got it! His power is all concentrated in the piece of Infernal Fire in his lantern. Take that away from him and he should be helpless."
Instantly, the battle-miasma of anger, frustration, fear — and, unusually, bone-deep weariness from the tatter-clothed apparition — was laced with sharp determination. "Right, you heard her!" Sailor Moon called out, her twin knee-length blond ponytails hanging from two forward-facing, garnet-red crystals on top of her head whipping around as she spun out of the path of another blast of Hellfire. One ponytail was clipped by the white-hot stream, its center shriveling away to ash. She ignored the lower strands floating to the pavement as she braced herself, took a deep breath, and shrieked.
Jack screamed, staggering back as the wave of fury-powered sound washed over him, what glass there still was in the windows behind him shattering in place. The hell-lantern swung wildly as his hands clapped over his bleeding ears, the Senshi dodging as its beam of fiery light played randomly about, then an equally fiery arrow from Sailor Mars' bow shaped of fire slashed through the swinging twine, and the lantern spun through the air as it arced toward the street.
Raven was in the air, diving over the edge of the roof and pushing downward. She reached out as she flew, her own dark magic reaching ahead of her, feeling for the dropping turnip, only to sense that turnip oozing through her 'grasp' like a ball-bearing through oil. Instantly abandoning her effort to stop the lantern's fall as she leveled out a few feet above the street, she reshaped her magic into a dome. She poured her strength into it so much that the dome seemed like a black hole of pure nothingness ... and the dome vanished in a roaring burst of reddish white.
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"No!"
Sailor Mars's gaze had been yanked upward at the shout, to the redheaded girl diving down into the light of the closest surviving streetlight, dark cape streaming behind her as she desperately reached out one black-clad arm. Equally black energy that sang with hellish discordance flashed down from the newcomer's extended hand to englobe the falling lantern. The lantern's tumbling arc turned into a slow, straight drop — and the dark demonic power reshaped itself into a dome so black it hurt.
Mars' eyes widened in horrified realization. "Down, hold your breath!" she screamed, the command cutting across the confused shouts of the other Senshi, and she threw herself flat without a care for the shards of window glass scattered across the sidewalk.
The light-swallowing dome vanished in an explosion of white-hot Hellfire, filling the street for an instant of searing heat, and then it was gone.
Mars pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, coughing and wheezing at the suddenly too-hot air — but at least she still had lungs to breath with, instead of empty spaces seared to ash by breathed-in Hellfire. But the others ... ?
She braced one gloved hand against the building behind her, ignoring the heat radiating from the bricks and the fire and smoke beginning to pour from glass-empty windows, and forced herself to her feet before looking frantically around. Moon still on her knees and one hand, the other fisted against hacking coughs. Mercury sitting up and staring at what Mars assumed was her Crystal of All Sight cupped in shaking hands. Jupiter kneeling beside a Venus crumpled at the base of the building ... Mars felt her heart stop for a moment before the tall, brunette tomboy breathed a sigh of relief and gave them a thumbs-up. Of the demonic entity they had been fighting there was nothing left but a man-shaped shadow scorched into the wall of the office building across the street, clearly visible in the growing firelight. Not one of their more successful clashes, even if they'd won in the end.
That just leaves ... There! Almost at the end of the block there was a flash of red hair, a crumpled figure lying face down in the light of the growing fires and streetlights that had been far enough away from the fight to survive. Pushing herself away from the wall, Mars stagger-ran down the street and dropped down, ignoring the asphalt scraping into a bare knee as she gently turned over the newcomer to reveal the face she had seen in her fire vision just that morning.
Mercury dropped to her knees beside Mars. "Raven!" she exclaimed as she ran the green-glowing Crystal in her hand along Raven's body. "What are the Titans doing here?"
"I think it's only her," Mars replied. "How is she?" She hadn't seen the Crystal do more than flicker red so there shouldn't be anything major, but Mercury was frowning...
"She'll be fine, just some scrapes and a bump on the head," Mercury assured her, though her frown didn't disappear. "But I don't like some of the readings I'm getting..." She looked around at the burning buildings. "I'll call this in, let's get out of here," she said as Moon and Jupiter joined them, a sagging Venus between them with her arms over their shoulders and each with an arm around her waist.
As Mars slipped her arms under Raven's knees and shoulders to pick her up, Mercury rose to her feet and rotated in place with the hand holding her Crystal outstretched. Nodding at whatever the Crystal had told her, she sent it to her pocket-dimensional 'Bag of Holding' (Venus had supplied the name, apparently from some game she'd tried out while living in London) and replaced it with the disposable cell phone their government contact had given them. She flipped the phone open and pressed its single button that both activated its GPS signal and called their contact before lifting it to her ear. A few moments later she said, "Mercury here, code three eight four one." ... "Yes, we just finished. Do you have the GPS location?" ... "Good, there are —" She took a quick look around. "— five burning buildings at the moment, though there will be more if the fire department doesn't hurry. No life signs and the fight was in the street, so we don't need any ambulances this time." ... "No, nothing to report immediately. Hopefully I'll have more at the standard debriefing. The usual two days?" ... "Good, see you then."
Closing the phone and returning it to her 'Bag of Holding', her frown returned as she looked down at the unconscious redheaded gaijin in Mars's arms. "Let's make it our secondary safe house."
The others' eyes widened. Moon exclaimed, "What!? But she's a hero!"
"Maybe she's a hero," Mercury replied. "I know she looks like Raven from the Teen Titans, but ... I'll explain when we get there, let's go."
After a moment Moon nodded, and she and Jupiter shifted so that they were in a rough circle. She grabbed Mercury's hand with the one that wasn't helping Jupiter hold up Venus while Mercury and Jupiter laid their other hands on Mars's shoulders. In a flash of light and an echoing crack, the Senshi vanished.